Page 52 of Elanie & the Empath
“Elanie?” He propped himself up from his spot across the flames. “You okay?”
Breathing so hard my throat felt raw, I placed my handover my thundering heart. Something was happening inside me. Everything below my navel felt fuzzy and warm, that little heartbeat between my legs pulsing, pulsing, pulsing.
“Were you dreaming?”
I turned toward him. His hair was mussed, eyelids still heavy with sleep, looking so much like they had when he’d swept his tongue over my?—
“Yes,” I said, so sensitive I was worried my systems might overload and shut down if so much as a gust of wind brushed across my neck.
“Must have been a bad one.” He rubbed his eyes. “Are you okay?”
This answer was easy. “No.” I was not okay. I was incandescent.
“Can you sleep?”
Again, “No.”
“Poor thing.”
He hadnoidea. I couldn’t go on like this. Hovering on the sharp edge of…something. How long would this last? Would I be stuck here forever, humming and buzzing and throbbing? It was torment, but I didn’t know how to make it stop.
“Come here,” he said while patting the ground in front of him. “I’ll keep you safe.”
I knew I shouldn’t go to him. He was half asleep and just being nice. I was lit up like a solar flare and wanting too much. I wanted him to look at me like he had in my dream. Touch me the same way. I wanted this need winding me up so tightly I was a coil one click away from springing free to leave me in peace. I should have just stayed on my side of the fire, letting the wordslet me make you feel goodrun through my mind until the sun finally rose.
But I didn’t.
With my heart still racing, I crawled around the fire and slid in front of him, closing my eyes as his sleep-heavy arm curled around my waist and pulled me close. Despite how hard I tried to sleep, with his warm body behind mine, his nose in my hair, and his breath ghosting over my neck, I remained hot, restless, and deeply uncomfortable until morning.
19.ELANIE
Another week slippedby like sand through my fingers. I’d never had much time for contemplation before. Now that I did, my appetite for it was insatiable. I indulged in thought, spending hours calculating the risks of staying in this cave, taking the likelihood of injury, malnutrition, resource depletion, even death, and dividing it by the effortlessness of my breath, the way my shoulders hung loosely now, how Sem’s laughter echoing off the cave walls had become my favorite sound. I manipulated variables, conducted philosophical experiments, all to reach some solution that would prove that we could stay here. That it could just be us in this cave, on this planet. Just us telling stories around the fire, dining on foot-eels and the strange multi-tentacled invertebrates he’d found clinging to the shoreline. Just us curling up together while we slept, which we did every night now.
I hadn’t had another dream about him, even though I’d begged my REM matrix to reproduce them every night. But two days ago, and then again this morning, I’d woken with his penis hard against me. Both times I pretended to still be asleep, spending long minutes wondering why I wanted topush back into him so badly. Why I wanted to roll over and touch him. Slip my hand down the front of his boxers and feel him. I wondered what we could become if we had more time here. If we had forever. I wanted that.Stars, I wanted forever here with him. But all he wanted to do was go home.
The solution to my calculations, once it finally revealed itself, was so obvious I was furious with myself for not thinking of it sooner. Even though Sem was frustrated with his lack of progress in fixing the comms, even though he’d spent hours every night tinkering with it and scowling at it while he raked his hands through his hair, I knew that returning to the ship wouldn’t be our salvation. Because it was what held us back. It was what kept us apart when it seemed so obvious to me that we should be together.
If there was no way to reach the ship, then there would be nothing left to do but settle in here. That was my solution: the comms had to go. It was easy too. Just a quick stomp and a little toss…all the way across the lake.
He’d be upset with me, but he’d understand when I explained it to him. In time, he’d even thank me for making such a brave and thoughtful decision, for letting us continue to live like this, happy and free and together. For letting us be more than we could ever be on the ship. And while I waited for him to return from gathering wood, I wondered what this feeling stirring inside me was, this giddiness and lightness and warmth. I thought it might be happiness.
Pacing back and forth in my safe corner of the cave, I swiped a hand over my forehead, my fingers coming back slick with sweat. It was the fire. Too hot. That had to go too, so I snuffed it out, covering the smoldering wood with dirt. My eyes burned, my vision blurring. Probably the smoke, the dust in the cave. I needed fresh air. I couldn’t breathe. I needed?—
His feet crunched through the snow, and I wheeled toward the cave mouth, a smile flashing across my face. I knew the slightly asymmetrical rhythm of his steps as well as the beat of my own heart now. I knew every inch of his skin, every wrinkle and freckle and smooth line of muscle. I knew that he laughed in his sleep. I knew he liked sunrises better than sunsets. I knew that he stared at me when he thought I wasn’t looking, and sometimes when he knew I was.
Yes.This was happiness. He’d understand, because he was happy here too. I knew he was.
Ducking into the cave, he dropped an armload of tree branches to the ground then brushed his hands off on his pants. When he looked up and winked at me, I felt it like a ray of sunshine heating my skin, my blood.
“Hey, you,” he said. Then all his bright amusement dimmed. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on.” Unable to stand still, I paced again, waiting for him to start separating the larger branches from the smaller ones like he always did.
His breath made a cloud in the air. “It’s freezing in here. Aren’t you cold?” he asked as a vertical line sank between his silver brows. “Did you put the fire out?”
“Do you ever think about the future?” I wiped more sweat from my brow, my hands trembling, my bones feeling brittle.
“Sure, all the time. Like, what are we going to eat tonight? Or tomorrow? Or the day after that?” Glancing back over his shoulder, he sighed at the lake. “I’m not sure how much longer I can keep nearly freezing to death to catch foot-eels. Have you noticed how it’s taking me longer and longer to warm up? That’s probably not good.”
